With a tiny turnout of voters in Bulloch County and statewide, clean-energy advocate Peter Hubbard captured the Democratic Party’s nomination for a seat on the Georgia Public Service Commission, or PSC, with Tuesday’s Democratic primary runoff.
With 58.2% of the vote, Hubbard defeated former Atlanta City Councilwoman Keisha Sean Waites, who received 41.8% in Tuesday’s runoff election, according to unofficial results, as reported by Dave Williams of Capitol Beat News Service. Now Hubbard will face incumbent Republican Commissioner Fitz Johnson in the Nov. 4 general election for the seat representing PSC District 3, which covers Fulton, Clayton and DeKalb counties. PSC members must be residents of their districts, but all of the seats are elected by voters statewide.
The Bulloch County Board of Elections and Registration had invoked a provision in state law to consolidate all of the county’s 16 precincts to a single Election Day voting place for a one-party primary runoff after the special primary itself drew less than 1% of the county’s registered voters for the three Democratic Party PSC candidates on the June 17 ballot. So the only voting place in Bulloch County, Tuesday, July 15, for the runoff was Statesboro Primitive Baptist Church, usual home of the “Church Precinct,” whose territory includes the Bulloch County Courthouse. The poll remained open 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.
From Monday through Friday last week, the voting office area at the county’s North Main Annex had been open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. for five days of in-person early voting opportunity.
Just 262 Bulloch County voters participated, out of 50,126 registered voters in the county, according to Bulloch Election Supervisor Shontay Jones’ report. The ballots cast included 141 on Tuesday, 112 by early in-person voters and nine returned paper absentee ballots. The turnout was just over half of 1 percent (0.52%) of all the county’s voters, with the only voters excluded being the slightly more than 1% who had voted the Republican ballot in the original primary.
In Bulloch County, Hubbard received 147 votes to Waites’ 114.
Prior to the election, Jones estimated that opening just one voting place instead of 16 on Tuesday would save the county more than $15,000.
As Williams reported in the Capitol Beat story, Waites had been the top vote-getter statewide in a three-way race in last month’s Democratic primary, with Hubbard coming in second. While neither candidate received the 50%-plus-one vote margin needed to win the primary outright, third-place finisher Robert Jones, a former utility executive, was eliminated.
Hubbard is an advocate for the nonprofit Georgia Center for Energy Solutions. In that role, he has served as an intervenor calling for reducing the use of fossil fuels in the production of electricity, Capitol Beat News Service reported.
Gov. Brian Kemp appointed Johnson to the commission in 2021 to fill a vacancy, so this year will mark the first time he has faced Georgia voters.